Joe Biden on illegal immigrants: The 11 million people in the shadows are “already Americans”

posted at 9:11 pm on May 5, 2014 by Allahpundit

Last month, Rand Paul was asked what he thought of Jeb Bush’s “act of love” comment about illegals. They’re not bad people, Paul conceded, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a limiting principle on illegal immigration. It can’t be that love for a family member who’s here or even love for America itself entitles you to violate the country’s immigration law, especially when we have a welfare state that we can’t pay for already. “You know, the whole world loves America,” he argued, “and they can’t all come.”

Can’t they? If you take Biden seriously, which, granted, is always a bad idea, the world is full of “Americans.” The only difference between those abroad and those who are here is that the latter group’s been a bit more proactive in claiming their citizenship. Or, if you prefer to think of it this way, foreign citizens are just Americans who haven’t been amnestized yet.

Emphasis on “yet.”

Vice President Joe Biden marked Cinco de Mayo, traditionally a celebration of Mexican culture, with an impassioned call for immigration overhaul…

Guests – which included the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, as well as several Hispanic lawmakers – feasted on chorizo and empanadas to the strains of a five-piece Mariachi band…

“I know I was criticized for saying, a couple months ago in Florida, that these 11 million folks in the shadows are already Americans. And I got pretty roundly criticized for that. But you know, they are Americans. They may not be citizens, but they are Americans,” Biden said.

“The definition of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, ‘Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed, or line of descent, it’s a question of principles, idealism and character.’ And I would argue that those 11 million folks who are here, breaking their neck, working hard, they are Americans,” he added.

He got heckled over the weekend during a commencement address by someone yelling, “Stop deportations!” His reply: “We’ll do that, too, kid, but let me finish my speech.” Speaking of which, via DrewM, here’s the sort of scrupulously fair questions on deportation that House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte got when he went on Univision this weekend. Quote:

JR: But Congressman, many Latinos don’t agree with you. Many Latinos think that President Barack Obama has enforced the laws and to an extreme way. He has deported, as you know, more than 2 million immigrants right now. The number of undocumented immigrants has decreased from 12 million to 11 million. So, he has been enforcing the law.

BG: Let me make it very clear. I don’t agree with that. First of all, the President himself has acknowledged, and the Secretary of Homeland Security Johnson has acknowledged that those numbers are basically cooked. The 369,000 people that were deported last year, two-thirds, almost two-thirds of those people were apprehended at the border. And in prior administrations they would not have been counted, because they were not put through the deportation process. They were simply turned back…

[…]

JR: So you want him to deport more people. Is that…

BG: …forces in the interior of the country. They’re not being enforced.

JR: Alright, so…

BG: And that is the problem. Only people who committed serious crimes.

JR: So your point is that you want more people to be deported?

I knew that Univision was hackish and in the tank for amnesty even by the standards of American media but not until I read the transcript of the Goodlatte interview by Jorge Ramos did I really understand. The “two million deportations” figure that Ramos keeps quoting was debunked weeks ago, by the illegal-friendly LA Times no less. What Goodlatte keeps trying to explain in the quoted bit is that, per the LAT, most of those “deportations” that are showing up in the statistics aren’t deportations as they’re commonly understood. They’re removals of illegals who’ve been caught near the border; in the past those people were simply bused back over into Mexico but now they’re fingerprinted and then formally deported. That’s why Obama’s numbers are so high. Basically, he’s counting catch-and-release as traditional “deportations.” In reality, if you’re an illegal living in the interior of the U.S., you have virtually no chance of being deported so long as you don’t have a criminal record — and even if you do have one, you’ve got a decent chance of being left alone then too.

Ramos knows all of this, I assume, since it’s been big news over the past few months to anyone in media who follows immigration, but the idea that deportations have actually gone down under Obama is rather unhelpful to the cause of amnesty in Congress. So we’re left with the surreal spectacle of demanding that a congressman explain himself for the outre position of believing that American law should be enforced. Just as Biden implied, everyone everywhere is an American. How dare we impede them in “coming home”? Exit question: Did Biden quote Teddy Roosevelt fairly? Read the full passage and see what he left out.

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No Joe, you stupid moron, illegals are ‘illegal’, i.e. criminal. A very good friend of mine has to wait to six extra to get her tax refund back now because some illegal got ahold her SSN and filed ahead of her using it. Her daughter has to skip a semester of school as a result because her mother was hoping to use her tax fund to pay it.

Not everyone has spent as much time on the internet as you apparently have. I have spent years of my life working extremely hard to contribute to a serious intellectual tradition,
Socialism isn’t a serious intellectual tradition. It’s a staging ground for people who like to mow other people down with tanks under the guise of establishing international norms.
The only socialist countries that aren’t violent basket cases are the ones that either Hitler, Stalin, or some Latin American equivalent didn’t have the military capability to successfully invade, so they used subterfuge to manipulate their governments from within instead.
BKennedy on May 6, 2014 at 1:28 AM

Let’s suppose you were out of town for week. While you were gone a homeless person jimmied open the sliding glass door to the basement and took up residence. He ate your food, used your bathroom and laundry and slept on the spare couch in the basement.
He also spent every spare minute cleaning. He found some paint and put a fresh coat of paint on the basement walls. He fixed little things around the house. He brought in the mail and even picked up the junk newspapers from the driveway.
At the end of the week you come home and you’re both astonished and terrified. You call the police to have this person dealt with. As he’s being put into the back seat of the squad car he looks at you with big sad eyes and plaintively moans:
“But I worked so hard!”
What’s the difference between this fictitous character and our crop of “undocumented workers?”

So, you have to be “in the shadows” and Mexican to be considered American, Joe? Because I am not, have been doing the immigration process the right way and legally for over ten years, and I am still not considered “American”.

“”…But you know, they are Americans. They may not be citizens, but they are Americans,” Biden said.”

Is this the same people that had issues with kids wearing American flag shirts on May 5th a few years ago, Joe? Or the people that feel the need to celebrate a “Mexican day” while living away from Mexico?

The illegals are more into the ITIN tax fraud, employment-related identity theft (which causes issues with SSA and the like), and personal fraud (credit cards, medical, and criminal/administrative, meaning giving your name and social when they go to the ER or get pulled over).

All of the illegals make it damned hard to sort out which is which and cause all sorts of hell for legitimate taxpayers, just like your friend is experiencing. Hopefully she fell into my program and has a six week wait, and not the legacy program with a six month wait… That delay is because, with the ancient mainframe system we use, it’s basically 2 weeks from the time we input a release until the system releases the return, two weeks from then for it to process and post, a week to generate the refund, and then 2-10 days depending on DD, mailed check, etc. Really wish we could upgrade it, but all of that got cannibalized along with the training budget…

Source: Day job. I’m not anyone official, just someone who works there and offers an unofficial insider’s perspective.

The Democrats need to gin up as many voters in November as possible. The rhetoric will get uglier and uglier. If Democrats actually cared about illegal aliens, they would have passed an amnesty bill between ’08 and ’10 when they controlled both houses of Congress. The fact is that they use Hispanics as useful tools/idiots in order to get minority voters. The Democrats even have the GOP running scared on the issue. The only way that the GOP can screw up their November prospects is to bring up amnesty between now and then. That would ensure that the Democrats will keep control of the senate and hold ground in the house.

** At a time when Americans no longer trust their government and demand a return to adhering to both the Constitution and Rule of Law, the first issue Bush decided to make one of his campaign ‘platforms’ is Illegal Immigration, and he does so by demonstrating Americans can no longer clearly tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats. In the midst of no less than four on-going investigations into the abuse of power and illegal activities of the current administration, while our government illegally spies on the American people, while the DOJ illegally spies on the media, while the President uses the IRS to target his personal political enemies, while over 90 million Americans are no longer even trying to find a job, while government policies / agendas have robbed Americans of their jobs / insurance / money…Bush chooses to make the ‘welfare’ of 11 million people who have so little respect for this country and our laws that they came here illegally a higher priority than the plight of American people, who he expects to vote him into office.

No Thank You, Mr. Bush! We already have an administration that refuses to represent the American people, who completely ignore both Constitution and Law, who violates both whenever they get in the way of their agenda rather than enforcing and upholding them equally and fairly across the board. We have been dragged behind the ‘government bus’ by lawless Liberals who have paved the way to reaching their goals with the oppressed, abused, un-represented, and dead bodies of Americans to the detriment of this nation. Our government has been transformed, as Obama promised, into a communistic/socialistic self-appointed/governed oligarchist state run by a narcissistic would-be ‘Banana Republic’ dictator and his cronies. No, sir…if you want to REPRESENT Americans as their President, BE an ‘American President’…not the President representing and making a higher priority of illegals rather than law-abiding citizens who are suffering because of the policies and illegal, criminal activities of our government. Reject the self-serving, national security-threatening pandering to illegals and other ‘enemies of the state’ simply to gain and retain your own personal power. You, however, sir, have already demonstrated that you have rejected that challenge, that call of duty.

Enough of the dynasties, enough of the path to socialism we have been forced onto by a self-appointed oligarchy.

No, Biden, you dumb arse…they’re NOT Americans, they’re frickin’ lawbreakers that need to be shipped back where the hell they came from! Of course, what part of obeying laws will Democrats ever understand?? Sheesh….

“The definition of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, ‘Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed, or line of descent, it’s a question of principles, idealism and character.’ …”

AND LEGALITY.

Biden’s squeaky double-speak is disgusting from a man in the Executive Branch. Not that it would be acceptable from anyone else but, well, as a US citizen, I still do expect some degree of sanity and intelligence from the Executive Branch. So disappointing that Biden and Barack don’t reach that expectation

What IS it about our Constitution that these Dems revile quite so much? Barriers established that they just can’t stand? Conditions they don’t respect or value?

Another thing: Biden and Obama always act like they’re really grand and oh, so popular while they aren’t. I don’t know on what basis they believe they’re so cool because they aren’t. Both of them are jerks, qualify as creepy and are downright insulting to this nation and to the offices they hold.

Biden spews stupidity as usual. No big deal for him. The scary part is when McConnell, Boehner, and the usual hacks among GOP leadership endorse every word of it. Coming soon, if not yet. Renee Ellmers already famously yelled at a constituent on pretty much this very point.

‘Ol Clueless Joe strikes again. You’d think the guy might be wondering why people are talking about Hilary when he’s right there in the VP spot. lol
Maybe the low buzz of people snickering all around him has made him tone deaf.

In another day and age, back when people actually took the Vice President of the United States seriously.. a guy in office who couldn’t illustrate knowledge of the what constitutes U.S. citizenship and what doesn’t, might have had a problem. Today though, accustomed as we’ve become to ‘ol Joe’s daily witless antics, it’s just another chuckle-worthy moment from Obama’s court jester.

Not to say that the DNC isn’t doing its level best to pad its voter registrations with newly-hatched Democrats, or that there aren’t quite a number of Republicans so gormless as to think they can likewise cash in. It’s just that nothing Joe Biden says is surprising anymore.

Yeah, maybe the only thing better than getting to discuss it with the IRS is knowing that your return is getting extra-super-special attention.

We actually go pretty easy on victim’s real returns. I can’t say what we look for (aiding criminals in evading the law=bad juju), but it’s pretty rare for us to audit a victim. We are looking to confirm that your real return is actually your real return, though.

But they’re just coming here looking for a better life by doing the jobs Americans won’t do and obeying the law, racist.
rogerb on May 6, 2014 at 1:03 PM

Love the sarcasm. Perfect agreement, there… Illegals are in the business of ruining American lives, through fraud, theft, and murder.

I prefer to compare them to nonresidents of a sanctuary city who fake local residency to get a residency-required government job, or to get the family into a nicer affordable housing program, or get the kids into an elite public school or college.

As a former resident of the People’s Republics of Berkeley, Oakland, and Santa Cruz, California I know firsthand sanctuary cities have no problem being residency cops, no matter how nice the family or blameless the kids. Sanctuary advocates also have a tough time beating that argument.